Have you looked in the waste bins at your business lately? I'm hoping you have and they were empty, except for an odd assortment of mixed media containers, cast-off food items, the occasional piece of styrofoam and odd bits. We are doing better at recycling in the United States, so let's look at a few numbers.

• 1: the number of times that most of the more than 25 billion cartons manufactured in the U.S. are used. We could use a lot of work on this area, but we are improving. The largest category of recycled paper goods was newspapers, which totaled 89% of paper recycling, followed by corrugated cardboard at 72%.

• 55 percent: the amount of water saved by producing recycled paper as compared to virgin paper. Recycled paper also takes 60-70 percent less energy to produce than paper from virgin pulp. Since many areas of the United States are in permanent drought situations, (including CA, AZ, NV and parts of UT), we need to concern ourselves with recycling paper in order to conserve water.
Some paper can't be reprocessed because of being soiled by food, etc.

• 120: the number of tons of steel saved if every UK office worker used one less staple a day. I added this staple purely for its jaw-dropping effect. It’s a stunner, don’t you agree?

• 8 billion: the number of gallons of gas saved if every commuter car in the U.S. carried just one more person. We need to carpool in places where we hadn’t thought of it before. Malls at Christmas? School parties and holiday gatherings?

In short, with paper products, we're doing pretty well. Nearly half of the paper used in the USA is now being recycled into new paper products. That's more than glass, metal, plastic and "miscellaneous" combined.

Don’t put your home grass clippings out for the landfill. Both grass clippings and food waste can be easily composted and shouldn't ordinarily be sent to the landfill. And with the holidays soon coming, it’s a good time to check with your municipality about picking up tree trimmings and Christmas trees and turn them into mulch for parks and landscaped street medians. This has an added benefit of saving irrigation water.

We’re doing better. We have a long way to go and plenty of time to pursue our goals. But there is no better time to start to Greenify than today.

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